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Sunday, 11 September 2016

Tea Review: Williamson Tea and the Wildlife trust

I LOVE tea.

Totally utterly love it. One of the hardest things about being pregnant wasn't that i had to give up alcohol or (finally) quit smoking but shock horror I had to restrict my Earl Grey tea consumption.... and decaf just won't do....

I have noticed in recent years that Tea is finally regaining popularity and standing up to its intense partner in crime, coffee. Tea is kinda like Coffee's more mellow cousin :)

So I thought I would start a series to showcase some of the best teas there are out there, to help budding tea drinkers choose the brands and of course small independent makers that are not only producing tea, but doing it ethically and conscientiously.

Earl Grey with Blue flowers

Williamsons Tea

So I got in touch with Williamson's'. Williamson's tea caught my eye as I had seem their beautiful Elephant tea caddies. They are also a conscientious brand that have set up the Williamson Tea Foundation to help look after their farms and farmers, invest in Climate smart agriculture and conservation of the land.

They are also working with The David Sheldrick Wildlife trust, the most successful orphan elephant rescue and rehabilitation program in the world and one of pioneering
conservation organisations for wildlife and habitat protection in East
Africa. At the heart of DSWT’s conservation activities is the ‘Orphans project’ which has achieved world wide acclaim through it’s hugely successful elephant and rhino rescue and rehabilitation program.

So they may be a bigger brand, but as you can see they are defininitly a brand I am happy to endorse and as it turns out they make really good tea!!!!!!

Any tea drinker will understand the disappointment of a rubbish cup of tea...... but with an Earl Grey drinker this worrying anticipation when someone offers to make you a brew is heightened, the mistake that is often made is not leaving the tea bag in long enough for the flavours to come out, you can sadly be left with a weak, bland drink.....

This Earl Grey though gave a really rich deep colour and flavor pretty quickly and when you open the bag you can see why. A good quality tea should have larger pieces that don't resemble tea dust. This tea had big chunks, and true to its name lots of pretty little blue flowers :)

Now, I may be a tea snob, but actually many Earl Grey drinkers would recoil in horror as I do add milk..... but as you can see from the picture below the colour is perfect!! No weak incipid cuppa for me. In fact this was actually a pretty rich flavour for an Earl Grey and I really enjoyed it.

I would definitely recommend this tea and it actually really puts my faithful old brand to shame, I have been converted!!

Perfect Colour!!!!

Mint Garden

So as I said, I have admired Williamson's Elephant Tea caddys for a
few years and now finally have one of my very own. Within this beautiful
Art Deco
tea caddy (top picture) was Mint Garden, a great combination of Mint and Green tea.
it was a really beautiful refreshing blend and I will most definitely be
buying this again!!

The caddy also looks really cool on my shelf ..... These caddys come in a range of colours, they would make a perfect present and could quite easily become a bit of a collection obsession!!

How interesting. I visited the sheldrick orphanage about 30 years ago and met the baby elephants and foster elephant Eleanor and a baby white rhino who had also been taken in. It's a wonderful place and it's lovely to read that the elephants are still being sponsored and protected. Betty

** most of the pictures I have used have been from pintrest and tumblr, sadly many have no credit. I am slowly working my way through my past posts trying to add sources. If you recognise a picture please please drop me an email, or leave a comment in that post. Cheers Gabi xxx